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Let me break out the vodka comrade and tell you of the shit I have seen...

"Why are you pointing your screwdrivers like that? They're scientific instruments, not water pistols.""Oh, the pointing again! They're screwdrivers! What are you going to do? Assemble a cabinet at them?""Are you capable of speaking without flapping your hands about?"""Timey" what? "Timey wimey"?"

IvCNuB4 wrote:The Old Doctor is Cat-Scratch ?Well that explains a lot :lol:

achilles wrote:Irrational is pretty much what I'd call it. Profiteering is another.

As an interesting aside, Blue Shield has announced that it is cutting HALF the doctors it has contracted with for its regular plans for the Covered California plans, (California ObamaCare), to contain costs. Kaiser, the HMO outfit, announced it isn't cutting a single doctor or facility. The other big company working in California, Blue Cross, hasn't said one way or another.

The difference is that Blue Shield's plans are PPO, wherein they have a network of doctors and hospitals that contract with them, and you pretty much have your choice of which you go to. Kaiser OTOH, makes you use their hospitals and doctors. Wait times are typically longer, and they've had the rep of kicking you out of the hospital sooner, though in my experience, that's changing.

So basically, the "better" plans, the PPOs, are essentially worthless, since the best doctors and hospitals will be out.

Which leaves me wondering whether I want to try for the Kaiser HMO or the Blue Cross PPO. Especially since the list of covered doctors on the Covered California site has been taken down since it was found to be wildly inaccurate---to the extent that specialities were screwed up.

I don't know what to do. I do need access to a surgeon who is adept in a rather specialized surgery that I'd like to have done, but I'm not sure if Kaiser has them, or if the PPO's will either.

Not to mention all of the other companies who have just decided to pull out of the California individual health insurance market completely, as mentioned earlier.

I hope you can find your surgeon. If you are able to pick the timing, might I suggest doing it quickly before the level of care here sinks to the lowest common denominator.

- Continuity is or it is not. There is no such thing as soft continuity.- A character IS his continuity.- Continuity is consistency of the characteristics of people, plot, objects, and places seen by the reader or viewer.

1. Their narrative/graphs conflate wealth with income. These are two separate things. Raising income taxes actually SLOWS income mobility, or the ability for the poor to move out of the bottom portion of the wealth graph.

2. They misstate this data as indicating the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. Actually studies of individuals show this is not the case. Individuals in the lowest 20% in 1975 were followed for 16 years. By 1991, the majority of these people had moved up into a different bracket. The study was updated in successive decade. The latest data form the Treasury Dept. shows.

•There was considerable income mobility of individuals in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2005 period as over half of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile over this period.•Roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved up to a higher income group by 2005.•Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996 – the top 1/100 of 1 percent – only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005. Moreover, the median real income of these taxpayers declined over this period.•The degree of mobility among income groups is unchanged from the prior decade (1987 through 1996).•Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the period from 1996 to 2005. Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period. In addition, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.

3. The last bullet point is important. While this video focuses on wealth inequality, isn't what we SHOULD be worried about living conditions? To put it simply which level of purchasing power would you wish on a populace?

Population 1:Lowest 20% average income $8000Highest 20% average income $200,000

Population 2:Lowest 20% average income $12,000Highest 20% average income $750,000

Obviously population 2 is less equal. Also obviously population 2's poor is better off.

Economic study after study shows when you strive for wealth equality, you do so by bringing down the standard of living to achieve equality, not by raising the floor.

- Continuity is or it is not. There is no such thing as soft continuity.- A character IS his continuity.- Continuity is consistency of the characteristics of people, plot, objects, and places seen by the reader or viewer.

Cat-Scratch wrote:Let me break out the vodka comrade and tell you of the shit I have seen...

I could use a good borscht!

- Continuity is or it is not. There is no such thing as soft continuity.- A character IS his continuity.- Continuity is consistency of the characteristics of people, plot, objects, and places seen by the reader or viewer.

Spektre wrote:This is true. So your contention is 3 of the top individual insurers pulling out of California and additional the LARGEST small business insurer pulling out of California immediate prior to Obamacare's implementation is coincidental?

Says the man who thinks its a coincidence the top 4 insurance companies moved out of California markets on the eve of Obamacare. Talk about a lack of credibility...

Yeah. There is a reason for that. NY City's current rates are among the highest in the country. Check out what Obamacare is doing to individual rates in the rest of the state and country. For Hab "I didn't do my homework" itual

Now what was that about individual premiums costing less under Obamacare.

As Forbes, the source of these graphs sums it up:

The bottom line: Obamacare makes insurance less affordable

For months, we’ve heard about how Obamacare’s trillions in health care subsidies were going to save America from rate shock. It’s not true. If you shop for coverage on your own, you’re likely to see your rates go up, even after accounting for the impact of pre-existing conditions, even after accounting for the impact of subsidies.

The Obama administration knows this, which is why its 15-page report makes no mention of premiums for insurance available on today’s market. Silence, they say, speaks louder than words. HHS’ silence on the difference between Obamacare’s insurance premiums and those available today tell you everything you need to know. Rates are going higher. And if you’re healthy, or you’re young, the Obama administration expects you to do your duty and pay up.

Just another example of Hab not doing his homework.

ROTM, you didn't like the messenger before, so I doubt you'll like the Heritage Foundation any better but here ya go, someone else running the numbers.

- Continuity is or it is not. There is no such thing as soft continuity.- A character IS his continuity.- Continuity is consistency of the characteristics of people, plot, objects, and places seen by the reader or viewer.

"It's really hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison of what is available before and after the exchanges open," said Elise Gould, director of health policy research at Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. "The non-group market is more likely to exclude many provisions that are available in the Obamacare policies, and in some cases people, particularly those with pre-existing conditions, could not find insurance in many states before Obamacare. In other words, you can't put a price on an offer that doesn't exist. Putting together a chart like this may be somewhat misleading; it's just not that credible."

ReturnoftheMack wrote:"It's really hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison of what is available before and after the exchanges open," said Elise Gould, director of health policy research at Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. "The non-group market is more likely to exclude many provisions that are available in the Obamacare policies, and in some cases people, particularly those with pre-existing conditions, could not find insurance in many states before Obamacare. In other words, you can't put a price on an offer that doesn't exist. Putting together a chart like this may be somewhat misleading; it's just not that credible."

So in other words, he doesn't know the methodology of this and the Manhattan group's study (which by extension neither do you) but because it comes up with a bad answer for our side, we will reject it out of hand. I just listened to an interview on Heritage's methodology and they went to great lengths to make as much as apples to apples comparison as is possible.

Nevertheless look at the numbers ROTM. What happened to, ""The average family will save $2500 per year on Obamacare"?

Last edited by Spektre on Sat Oct 19, 2013 12:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

- Continuity is or it is not. There is no such thing as soft continuity.- A character IS his continuity.- Continuity is consistency of the characteristics of people, plot, objects, and places seen by the reader or viewer.

ReturnoftheMack wrote:Also, why does the Heritage Foundation not count Massachusetts as a state?

There are only 47 states there...can you find the other missing 2?

- Continuity is or it is not. There is no such thing as soft continuity.- A character IS his continuity.- Continuity is consistency of the characteristics of people, plot, objects, and places seen by the reader or viewer.

Spektre wrote:So in other words, he doesn't know the methodology of this and the Manhattan group's study (which by extension neither do you) but because it comes up with a bad answer for our side, we will reject it out of hand. I just listened to an interview on Heritage's methodology and they went to great lengths to make as much as apples to apples comparison as is possible.

Nevertheless look at the numbers ROTM. What happened to, ""The average family will save $2500 per year on Obamacare"?

Here's what doesn't make sense to me, how can you save on something you didn't have in the first place?

Maybe there were these $90 individual plans that the Heritage Foundation somehow found, but for one reason or another, people weren't buying. Now with the Medicaid expansion and mandate for the ACA, people have to buy it. The people who already had the $90 plans (if they actually exist) don't have to worry.

ReturnoftheMack wrote:Here's what doesn't make sense to me, how can you save on something you didn't have in the first place?

Maybe there were these $90 individual plans that the Heritage Foundation somehow found, but for one reason or another, people weren't buying. Now with the Medicaid expansion and mandate for the ACA, people have to buy it. The people who already had the $90 plans (if they actually exist) don't have to worry.

Also, does the Heritage Foundation take the subsidies into account?

Yes, these were post-subsidy averages ROTM.

"How can you save on something you didn't have in the first place.?"

What does that mean? How is that relevant? These charts are comparing how much a healthcare plan cost prior to the institution of the Obamacare exchanges and after, with as similar a plan as you could make.

(One of the reasons people are surprised at the "low cost" of the plans before the rollout is that to compare apples to apples they had to increase, by a significant amount, the deductibles and coinsurance, to levels not usually encountered in order to match these new higher levels from the exchange based plans.)

- Continuity is or it is not. There is no such thing as soft continuity.- A character IS his continuity.- Continuity is consistency of the characteristics of people, plot, objects, and places seen by the reader or viewer.

So in follow up to an earlier post I made relative to the progressive (capped) income based tax that is supposed to be some kind of "punishment" for those that don't get health insurance for themselves, I'd like to add that it's been outed that the only way that the tax/fine can even be imposed is if someone files their taxes and is due a return. The federal return will then be reduced by the amount of the fine.

If someone isnt due a return or doesn't even file then the fine CANNOT be imposed.

People's wages can't be garnished, liens cannot be asserted and the government cannot simply go into someone's bank account to take the money.

This only furthers how the dregs will exploit this system and how everyone else that is responsible will end up incuring the cost of this system.